Posts Tagged 'Politics'

Today would have been Mayor Richard J. Daley’s 117th birthday. In his honor, I’m posting an artifact from his last campaign, in 1975. Here we have a recipe from the mayor’s wife, Eleanor “Sis” Daley.

The recipe is in a pocket-size 32-page booklet titled Shopping Tips—Compliments of Mayor Richard J. Daley. It’s actually a pretty useful tool for your trip to the grocer. There are tables of weights and measures, a guide to the amount of vegetables to buy based on the size of your family, as well as homey reminders to always shop from a list, check expiration dates, look for seasonal sales, and so on.

I must admit that our family never did try Mrs. Daley’s white bread recipe. If anyone does do that baking and you like the result, please tell me—or better still, tell Rich Daley.

On this date, a Chicago-born woman was sworn in as the president of a South American country. The woman was Janet Jagan, the country was Guyana.

She had been born on the South Side as Janet Rosenberg in 1920. While working as a student nurse at Cook County Hospital she met dentistry student Cheddi Jagan. The couple married in 1943 and moved to Cheddi’s native land, then a colony known as British Guiana.

Janet and Cheddi

The Jagans soon became active in the independence movement, and continued in politics after independence was achieved. Cheddi was elected president in 1992, serving until his death early in 1997. That December, Janet was elected president in her own right.

Janet Jagan resigned the presidency for health reasons in 1999. She died in Brazil while undergoing medical treatment in 2009.

Like the rest of the nation, Chicagoans awaited the results of the presidential contest. At about 10 pm, the bulldog edition of the next day’s Tribune hit the streets. The headline read “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

Well, that was expected. President Harry Truman was trailing badly in all the pre-election polls. The election itself was a mere formality. Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York, would be moving to the White House.

What’s that in Truman’s hands?

But don’t go looking up President Dewey in your history books. Truman upset all the pollsters and won. And the World’s Greatest Newspaper was stuck with its most embarrassing headline.

Many factors led to the Tribune screw-up. The printers were on strike, so the first edition of the paper had an earlier deadline. First returns showed Dewey with his expected lead. The staunchly Republican Tribune was no friend of Democrat Truman. The paper’s political correspondent assured the editor that Dewey was in. So the editor gave the order: “Roll the bulldog!”

Over 150,000 Tribs were on the street when the paper realized its mistake. Circulation trucks were sent to retrieve the bulldog edition, replacing it with papers headlined “Early Dewey Lead Narrow.” By then, too many early copies had passed into public hands.

The next day, Truman was returning to Washington by train from his home in Missouri. His victory was assured. At the St. Louis railroad station, a reporter handed him a copy of the infamous Tribune. Grinning broadly, the president held up the paper for photographers.

Fake News, 1948

Back in Chicago, the Sun-Times gloried in its rival’s mistake. For two days after the election, the paper ran a cut of the Tribune‘s front-page, with the caption “The polls were off—so were some headlines.” On the third day, the Sun-Times put the train-station picture of Truman on its front page.

The years passed. By 1972, the new generation at the Tribune had come to terms with the paper’s legendary blooper. Plans were made to present Truman with a replica plaque of the front page for its 25th anniversary. But the former president died before this happened.

Today, original copies of the “Dewey Defeats Truman” Tribune are valued collectables. However, if your budget is limited, a small ceramic mock-up of the front page is still sold at—where else?—the Harry Truman Presidential Library.